


In Which Bucky Barnes Stops a Bus and Gets a Cute Angry Guy's Number

by aunt_zelda



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Asthma, Canes, Chronic Pain, Disability, Disabled Character, Fantasizing, M/M, Meet-Cute, Public Transportation, Self Confidence Issues, Social Anxiety, Speech Disorders, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 01:15:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4727252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recently discharged war veteran Bucky Barnes spots a guy with canes trying to catch a departing bus. Bucky gets the bus to stop, and that's how he meets Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Bucky Barnes Stops a Bus and Gets a Cute Angry Guy's Number

**Author's Note:**

> Written for femmecrip on tumblr, in response to some headcanons they sent me a few weeks ago. Here's the two headcanons I decided to focus on and use as prompts:
> 
>  
> 
> _steve is obs still preserum like the movie, skinny short, asthma, HoH, colorblind, scoliosis, some chronic pain. Maybe he uses a cane now that its easier to access one, but maybe not. Since he's always been ill and he takes to fights like a fish to water, Steve would be the cpunk king. Like he would love that message of being free to be angry and defiant with your disability - not having to be perfect or inspiring, and fighting ableism._  
>  _Bucky would be an amputee through accident or maybe war. He’d be traumatized and he’d be turning to cpunk and Steve as he struggles with being newly disabled. He’d need that reassurance of community and to fight internalized ableism and also some of that righteous indignation like Steve. But I think he’d also like that he does’t need to feel perfect, but Bucky feels imperfect and is struggling to feel like a good person even though he is._
> 
>  
> 
> I really hope I did this justice. I don't remember the last time I was this nervous about posting something. I hope it's good. I hope I didn't mess this up. But if I did mess up please, anyone, do not hesitate to let me know in the comments so I can improve in the future. 
> 
> Please note that in this fic, Bucky is grappling with some serious self image issues and thinks of himself negatively at times. This is not meant to be a reflection of all disabled people, but rather of how Bucky himself feels in this specific time and place. 
> 
> Steve "Fight Me" Rogers is one of my favorite things in the world right now. I wanted to work in a line about how he gets into fights with assholes but I couldn't. ~~Maybe I should write a sequel.~~
> 
> I'm picturing them in Boston because that's where I've spent most of the last 4 years of my life, but this could be NYC too, I just default to Boston for most of my fics.

“Hey, thanks for your service!”

Bucky looks up, forces a smile, a nod, and ducks down to the book he’s pretending to read on the cramped bus seat.

This happens several times a day. 

He’s honestly not sure which is worse: when he goes out with his veteran’s hat and his jacket, or when he doesn’t. People don’t notice the arm in the winter, not for a while, he puts a glove on it and keeps it at his side. It’s not until he’s inside somewhere that people notice, stare, shoot him looks of pity. 

At least when he wears his hat and jacket, there’s a lot less pity, a lot less staring. Less abject pity, at least. 

Unfortunately it also brings out the urge in people to talk to him, masking their pity probably, deciding they just _have_ to say something. “Support the troops” as it were, with a variety of empty platitudes. Thanking Bucky for his service, telling him they respect what he did “over there” (never mind that ‘over there’ could be in a country they can’t find on a map), even saluting him, when he was never an officer, never worth that much in the field and sure as fuck not worth it now. 

It’s different with people who’ve lost someone in the service. He’s seen women, even some grown men, tear up, remembering their kid or spouse or sibling who died. That stings in a different way, because it’s not Bucky they’re seeing when they look at him, it’s their lost loved ones. He becomes a ghost to them.

At least other vets seem to get it. They’ll see each other in supermarkets, in parks, the library sometimes. They’ll share a look, a tired nod, and move on. Bucky knows he should probably go to more of those meetings, connect with other vets, but every time a notification for one pops up on his phone, he deletes it. He’ll go to the next one. No, the next one. No … the one after that, definitely. 

Bucky is staring out the window when he notices the guy making his way to the bus stop, leaning on two canes at once, carrying one of those big black portfolios Bucky’s seen art students toting around a lot. He’s clearly in view, but the bus doors slam shut. The guy yells “Oh come on!” though he’s so far away Bucky can’t hear him.

Bucky yanks on the cord by the window, dinging the “stop requested” sign. The bus inches forward along the curb, undeterred. 

“Hey!” Bucky stands up as the bus lurches. He stumbles, tries to reach for the railing with his left arm. Which, of course, doesn’t respond to his mind anymore. He almost falls, catches one of the railings with his right arm, left arm swinging back and forth in the air. Obvious to all the passengers now, who are of course all staring at him. 

“You need out?” the bus driver calls over his shoulder.

“No, he needs in.” Bucky points out the window at the guy with the canes, who’s just made it to where the bus was, moments before. 

The bus driver heaves a sigh of frustration and slams on the brakes. 

Art Portfolio Guy knocks on the door, grinning with exaggerated sweetness and a nasty glint in his eyes. Bucky wants to laugh: the guy clearly knows what the fuck just happened, and he is far from happy.

That’s confirmed when the bus doors hiss open and Portfolio Guy heaves himself up the steps. “Gee, thanks for waiting,” his voice drips sarcasm as he taps his card against the sensor. He’s wheezing, even though it wasn’t that far of a fast walk.

“Don’t thank me, thank him,” the bus driver growls, nodding at Bucky. “He’s the one made me stop. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“So do I.” Portfolio Guy says, and his grin is vicious now.

Bucky’s seen that kind of look on guys in the service before, mean little guys who’d get into bar fights on leave just for fun, proving a point to … someone, God maybe, their daddies, the world, anyone willing to fight them back. 

Either the bus driver doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care, because he just lurches the bus into traffic. 

Portfolio Guy staggers, canes slipping on the bus floor, and ends up leaning against the flat partition behind the driver, canes braced against the floor and knees locking up. A grimace crosses his face. Portfolio Guy is definitely wheezing now. He fishes an inhaler out of his jacket pocket and puffs it, glaring at the universe in general. 

Bucky, a few feet away by the second set of doors, slouching by the railing, eyes the people in the seats designated in bright blue for, according to the diagrams on the windows, genderless white blobs with canes. He’s aware that not every person who needs one of those seats is gonna look like him, or Portfolio Guy, or the white blobs. He’s also aware that the likelihood of the people sitting down being lazy selfish assholes is much higher than them having rare fatigue conditions. 

So he starts glaring, real hard, at a few in the row next to where he’s standing. Two guys and a girl, chatting away, sharing their phones. They get that they’re being watched soon enough, and he just keeps glaring. Then he jerks his head at Portfolio Guy, and keeps glaring at the kids.

They get it. At the next stop they stand up, as one, and scurry to the back of the bus. No apologies to Portfolio Guy of course. They don’t even look ashamed. They look kinda scared, to be honest, but scared is better than nothing. Bucky decides he prefers that to empty pity.

Portfolio Guy raises an eyebrow and sinks down onto one of the vacated seats. “My hero,” he eyes Bucky up and down. The sarcasm’s gone but Bucky gets the sense it could return at any moment. Portfolio Guy raises an eyebrow and tilts his head. 

Bucky shrugs and hastily goes back to staring at his book, face burning under the scrutiny of a stranger, even a stranger who isn’t looking at him with pity for once. Portfolio Guy is cute, in that “shaved a third of my head and grew the rest out long” kind of a way the college kids seem to be doing these days. 

Though, upon closer inspection (side-eying while still pretending to read the book) Portfolio Guy isn’t a kid. He looks young because he’s small and skinny, but he’s probably a lot closer to Bucky’s age than Bucky was initially thinking. Portfolio Guy has that pinched look that some of the guys in the VA hospitals had, when they’d been in cots for months. His canes look old, scuffed and scratched up along the sides. Faded political stickers are plastered to the top halves: names in red, white and blue that Bucky hasn’t heard of before. Bucky concludes that whatever’s up with Portfolio Guy, he’s had a lot of time to get used to it. 

“You wanna ask, just ask,” Portfolio Guy says, crossing his arms as the bus slides to a stop at a busy intersection. 

“What?” Bucky blinks, leans closer. People are jostling past him, squeezing on and off the bus, feet clattering, bodies pressing … Bucky doesn’t like the bus at peak hours. 

“You’re staring. So ask already.” The vicious glint is back in the guy’s eyes. 

Bucky realizes, belatedly, that his left hand is tucked into his jacket pocket. He must have shoved it there after his almost-fall, an embarrassed habit of his when he hasn’t covered the hand with a glove. It’s not that he’s ashamed, he just prefers to hide it when he can, stop some of the staring. But now that’s made Portfolio Guy assume that Bucky is another one of the staring, pitying people. 

“Not my business,” Bucky mutters, and slides his left arm free, letting it dangle in the air. The plastic almost matches his skin tone, but it’s pretty obvious what it is, and what it isn’t. 

Portfolio Guy’s eyes slide down to it, then back up to Bucky’s face. 

The bus pulls back into traffic. Bucky loops his arm around the railing and resumes staring at the same two pages of his book. 

“Shit,” Portfolio Guy’s ears are red, and the blush spreads down his neck. 

Bucky watches its progress, disappearing under the guy’s collar. He’s seized with a sudden desire to follow that blush as far as it goes, with his tongue. Not on the bus, obviously, there are probably less sexy places than the bus but Bucky can’t think of any at the moment. A room though, is where Bucky imagines pursuing Portfolio Guy’s blush. His room, or Portfolio Guy’s, somewhere with a bed (mattress on the floor, in Bucky’s case, which he seldom even uses, he sleeps on the rug, tangled in his sleeping bag.) Not just licking, not after a while, Bucky wouldn’t be satisfied with that alone. He’d want to bite, just a little, make Portfolio Guy shiver and squirm underneath him.

“So, I’m an asshole,” Portfolio Guy continues, shaking Bucky out of his daydream. He smiles awkwardly at Bucky. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t know,” Bucky shrugs. “Wasn’t exactly obvious about it.”

“Yeah, well I should have been more observant.” Portfolio Guy looks out the bus window. “Shit, this is my stop … dammit …”

Portfolio Guy pulls out a pen and starts scribbling on the page of a battered pocket notebook.

Bucky shifts to the side in anticipation of more people shoving their way past him through the doorways. 

“Look, you don’t have to, but if you wanna, gimme a call?” Portfolio Guy holds out a torn piece of paper to Bucky. “I can apologize some more. And you can tell me how your book ends.”

Bucky looks at the paper, and at Portfolio Guy. He doesn’t have to take it, he can just go back to staring at his book, never see this guy again. 

But he really, really wants to.

Bucky takes the scrap of paper, slides it in between the pages he’s been staring at for the entire bus ride. There’s a name written on it, below the string of numbers: Steve.

Portfolio Guy … Steve, smiles, a sincere smile this time, not that vicious look he gave the bus driver. Bucky wants to step backwards from the force of it. 

“Nice meeting you, hero,” Steve says, easing himself upright and pushing his way to the doorway.

Bucky’s words catch in his throat, which happens a lot these days. He raises his right hand in a faint wave, face burning. 

Steve flashes another warm smile at him, before vanishing into the crowd.

~*~

After three days of purposefully not thinking about it, Bucky debates with himself for a full hour. He’s curled up on his mattress, left arm on the floor nearby, phone clutched in his hand. Finally Bucky settles on his first (and likely last) text message to Steve the Portfolio Guy. 

_Hi. This is the guy from the bus. (I made the driver stop to let you on.)_  
_I didn’t finish the book._

The reply comes twenty minutes later. Bucky hasn’t moved in that time, didn’t see the point. 

_Hey! Nice to hear from you. : )_  
_Why haven’t you finished the book?_

Bucky cringes when he types his response. _I never started it, I just pretend to read it on the bus so people don’t talk to me._

_Shit, so I’m the asshole who bothered you? After you got the bus driver to stop for me? Wow. I’m sorry._  
_You don’t need to text me if you don’t wanna._

Bucky types as quickly as he can manage. _No, I want to talk to you. YOU weren’t bothering me. Most people bother me._

_Oh, good. I hate assholes on public transit! I was worried. : /_

_You are not an asshole._ Bucky types. Then he thinks back to Steve’s vicious grin. _Well, not to me at least._

_Lol. You caught me on a bad day. Lost count of how many busses have left me at the curb. I’ve got canes, not the zombie virus._

Bucky laughs. _That’s not ok. People should be more respectful._

_Fuck “respect.” Today someone told me I was an “inspiration.” WTF, lady, I am buying Twizzlers and beer, I am not your own personal Oscar movie, leave me alone!_

Bucky laughs again, harder. _I bet I get that more. People tell me I’m a “hero” and “so brave” bc I’m a vet. And I think, ‘your mouth says that, but your eyes are saying you think I’m broken.’_ Bucky blinks at the screen, shocked at himself, as the message sends. 

_Wow. Have you told anyone that yet? 0.0_

Bucky cringes. Steve clearly didn’t have a problem mouthing off to the bus driver; Bucky could barely manage to tell him to stop the bus. 

_No. Sometimes the words don’t come easy._  
_Or at all._  
_Why I’m texting, not calling. Sorry. : (_

_Stop apologizing. I’m an asshole for assuming._  
_You sign? I’m HoH, I should sign more than I do._

Bucky feels like a truck just slammed into him. He’d never even considered that. None of the army doctors ever so much as mentioned it, though he’d seen plenty recommend it to guys who lost their hearing from IED blasts. 

_That makes so much sense! Never thought about it until just now._  
_Only got one hand though? Will it work?_

_Simple stuff will. Designed, like most stuff, for people with two hands. You can modify it to work for you._

That sounds like a lot of work, just to have more people look at him with pity. Still, it might actually help in some cases. 

_I’ll give it a try._ Bucky texts eventually. 

_I could help if you want company?_

Bucky grins, seized by inspiration. _Yeah, I really do. Coffee shop by the main library branch?_

_I’m free Friday afternoon, 3pm. See you then?_

_Yes._ Bucky’s face is burning. How is this real? This … this kind of thing doesn’t happen to guys like him. He can barely speak to people, and now he’s arranged some kind of … date thing, with a cute guy he met on a bus. 

_So this is awkward, but I don’t know your name yet? I can keep calling you ‘hero’ if you want? ; )_

Bucky’s stomach flips, but in a fun way for once, not a sickening way. _James. But my friends call me Bucky._

_Are we friends?_

_I stopped a moving bus for you, and you volunteered to help me learn a new language. I think that means we’re friends? I don’t know how this works, to be honest._ Bucky shrugs at the phone.

_That’s cool. See you on Friday, Bucky. : )_

_See you, Steve._

Bucky stretches out on his mattress, and manages to fall asleep there instead of having to tug himself onto the floor. 

Maybe it’ll be great, maybe it’ll be awful and awkward, but Bucky’s looking forward to Friday afternoon.


End file.
